Accommodation

Call for Papers

This one-day conference is designed to give linguistics postgraduates from all research areas an opportunity to present and discuss their research in an informal and intellectually stimulating setting.

We invite postgraduate students from any institution to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentations on any area of linguistics; theoretical or applied.

Key dates

Notification of acceptance: Early February 2017.Registration: Details to be announced.

Presentation guidelines

Accepted abstracts will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion.

There will be a dedicated poster session on the day of the conference. Speakers will also be invited to submit their paper for publication in the the Newcastle and Northumbria Working Papers in Linguistics.

Formatting

Your abstract should be no more than one A4 page in length, including references.

Please format the page as follows:

line spacing: 1.5

all margins: 2.5cm (1 inch)

text alignment: justified

title text: Times New Roman, 14pt, bold, centred (NB: this should include name and affiliation on the named abstract file)

body text: Times New Roman, 12pt

paragraphs: do not indent; leave one clear line between paragraphs

Review and Acceptance

All abstracts which conform to the above guidelines will be anonymously reviewed by two reviewers. Once the review process is complete, you will be notified by the organising committee if your abstract has been accepted for oral or poster presentation.

Accepted abstracts will be allotted 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. There will be a dedicated poster session on the day of the conference and posters will be on display for the whole day.

Presenters will also be invited to submit their papers to be considered for inclusion in the Newcastle and Northumbria Working Papers in Linguistics.

Mounting and arranging materials

Posters will be mounted using Blu-Tack, which will be provided. Use of one or two large sheets of paper is preferred; where possible use of many small sheets of paper should be avoided, as a limited amount of Blu-Tack will be available.

The abstract title, authors and affiliations should be indicated in a heading at the top of your poster. Lettering for the title line should be at least 2.5 cm high. Please use an appropriately-sized font throughout.

PowerPoint or similar software can also be used to produce clear posters and most universities have poster printing services.

Illustrations and layout

Keep visual materials simple and clear. For clarity, graphs, charts, tables and pictures should be used to communicate information where possible. You may also like to consider providing a handout or preparing a sign-up sheet for delegates who request additional information.

2017 Conference Report

The 12th Newcastle upon Tyne Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics was held in the Research Beehive at Newcastle University on Friday 31st March, 2017.

52 delegates, including students from the UK and overseas, and a number of staff from Newcastle and Northumbria, attended the conference.

A total of 30 presentations (24 oral and 6 poster) were given by PhD students studying in different universities in the UK and Ukraine. These presentations were selected from about 58 abstract submissions, following double-blind review by academic staff at Northumbria, Newcastle and Durham Universities.

The conference was further enriched by the presentations of three plenary speakers. Dr Elaine Lopez from Newcastle University opened the conference with a paper entitled “Linguistic Theory and the Second Language Classroom.” Professor John Joseph, University of Edinburgh, followed this up later in the day with his paper on "How Languages Get (and Lose) their Mojo." In the final plenary session, Professor Paul Baker from Lancaster University gave a paper entitled “Beyond the checkbox: Understanding what patients say in online feedback.”

The day was finished off with further informal discussions at a dinner at Ottoman Restaurant. Most of the delegates and organising committee members made it to Ottoman where they continued to exchange interactions and network among themselves and with Professors John Joseph and Paul Baker.

The conference was organised with generous support from Northumbria University (Graduate School), Newcastle University (School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics) and the Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences. A team of PhD students from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities served in the planning committee: Suaad Ambu Saidi, Kingsley Oluchi Ugwuanyi, Hanna Sliashynskaya, Sahar Naeem Alkaab, Hana Ehbara, Chanuwan Phetkla, Hanain Brohi, Vanja Vasiljevic. The committee wish to extend thanks to Ms. Sheila Heppel for her tremendous assistance in the run-up to the conference. Our thanks are also due to Dr Chris Leyland for assisting the committee in the planning process, and for chairing the conference on the day, inaugurating and closing the conference and introducing the plenary talks. We also wish to thank the academic staff who helped with the abstract reviewing for their thorough work.

On the day of the conference, a team of enthusiastic volunteers (Woralak Bancha, Nisit Kamphikul, Xinliang Jiang, Caitlin Halfacre, Kevin Tai, Dhiaa Janaby, Chutinan Noobutra, Malik Al Zakwani, Liam Keeble) helped to ensure the smooth running of the day. The organisation process was an invaluable development opportunity for committee members, and strengthened their team-working, problem-solving and event-management skills. Students interested in organizing next year’s conference are strongly encouraged to do so; it offers the chance to contribute to an exciting and important event, develop skills and meet other linguistics students.

This report was compiled by Kingsley Oluchi Ugwuanyi (conference co-chair) on behalf of the Organising Committee.